Papers by Denisse Sepulveda Sanchez
Human Arenas
This paper explores the trajectories of the authors as indigenous women who are members of the Ma... more This paper explores the trajectories of the authors as indigenous women who are members of the Mapuche people. It focuses on the experience of constructing indigenous identities in colonial urban spaces and positioning in academia. This qualitative study follows a flexible methodology oriented to producing and analyzing personal narratives related to the journey of self-identification and the subsequent insertion in the academic space. The findings reveal the difficulties of constructing indigenous identities amidst the dispossession of land, loss of native language, and diaspora, which are the most notorious consequences of the internal process of colonization promoted by the Chilean state against the Mapuche people. This affects both past and new generations of indigenous people, giving rise to the construction of different profiles, emerging from nuanced circumstances that do not fit in with ingrained beliefs or stereotypes about indigeneity. In the cases of the authors, this means questioning their indigenous authenticity, since they are part of a generation born outside the ancestral territory and have lost their Mapuche surnames. The results also expose the obstacles faced by indigenous people in accessing academia and in validating their perspective of research on indigenous topics. Moreover, this study appeals to the accountability of academic institutions to eradicate the mechanisms through which the exclusion of indigenous peoples is perpetuated.
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Sociology
This article examines how upward mobility affects both class and ethnic social positioning of Map... more This article examines how upward mobility affects both class and ethnic social positioning of Mapuche indigenous people in Chile. The article builds on cultural class analysis dominated by Bourdieusian approaches, suggesting the incorporation of an intersectional and postcolonial lens, considering the ways in which ethnicity complicates classed trajectories, focusing on class mobility and indigeneity. Drawing on 40 life history interviews of first-generation Mapuche professionals, the analysis reveals complex and varied responses to social mobility. The interviewees display three groups of responses: the ‘mobile-accommodators’, embracing deracinated middle-class identities; the ‘rooted’, asserting connections with working-class and Mapuche origins; and the ‘resignifiers’, embracing a more ambivalent class identity, but articulating a strong sense of Mapuche identity. The experience of upward social mobility represents a challenge to the respondents’ sense of class position, class an...
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Human Arenas, 2022
This paper explores the trajectories of the authors as indigenous women who are members of the Ma... more This paper explores the trajectories of the authors as indigenous women who are members of the Mapuche people. It focuses on the experience of constructing indigenous identities in colonial urban spaces and positioning in academia. This qualitative study follows a flexible methodology oriented to producing and analyzing personal narratives related to the journey of self-identification and the subsequent insertion in the academic space. The findings reveal the difficulties of constructing indigenous identities amidst the dispossession of land, loss of native language, and diaspora, which are the most notorious consequences of the internal process of colonization promoted by the Chilean state against the Mapuche people. This affects both past and new generations of indigenous people, giving rise to the construction of different profiles, emerging from nuanced circumstances that do not fit in with ingrained beliefs or stereotypes about indigeneity. In the cases of the authors, this means questioning their indigenous authenticity, since they are part of a generation born outside the ancestral territory and have lost their Mapuche surnames. The results also expose the obstacles faced by indigenous people in accessing academia and in validating their perspective of research on indigenous topics. Moreover, this study appeals to the accountability of academic institutions to eradicate the mechanisms through which the exclusion of indigenous peoples is perpetuated.
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Sociology, 2022
This article examines how upward mobility affects both class and ethnic social positioning of Map... more This article examines how upward mobility affects both class and ethnic social positioning of Mapuche indigenous people in Chile. The article builds on cultural class analysis dominated by Bourdieusian approaches, suggesting the incorporation of an intersectional and postcolonial lens, considering the ways in which ethnicity complicates classed trajectories, focusing on class mobility and indigeneity. Drawing on 40 life history interviews of first-generation Mapuche professionals, the analysis reveals complex and varied responses to social mobility. The interviewees display three groups of responses: the 'mobile-accommodators', embracing deracinated middle-class identities; the 'rooted', asserting connections with working-class and Mapuche origins; and the 'resignifiers', embracing a more ambivalent class identity, but articulating a strong sense of Mapuche identity. The experience of upward social mobility represents a challenge to the respondents' sense of class position, class and ethnic identities, as they have had to manage indigenous identity claims across their social origins and destinations.
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The Sociological Review, Jun 26, 2019
I am a migrant from South America, who has lived in UK more than five years, and is from a workin... more I am a migrant from South America, who has lived in UK more than five years, and is from a working-class family with indigenous heritage; I want to share some impressions that I have about doing sociology about the global south in the global north. Despite Sociology being a discipline that is aware of social inequalities and power dynamics, the discipline has many challenges related to this question. For all people who are in academia is important to attend conferences in order to show their work and learn and update your knowledge from other academics. When travelling a long way, often at great personal and economic expense, to attend conferences, it means a lot. Due to conference costs-often associated with conferences' location-opportunities to share our work and establish networks can be very limited. Therefore, we are immediately at a disadvantage with the rest of researchers. When we have the opportunity of presenting our work, we are often placed in panels
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Crítica urbana: revista de estudios urbanos y territoriales., 2021
Critica Urbana. July 2021. Denisse Sepúlveda, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Swi... more Critica Urbana. July 2021. Denisse Sepúlveda, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland. Francisca Ortiz, University of Manchester.
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This book chapter explores the experiences of Mapuche people who are the first generation in thei... more This book chapter explores the experiences of Mapuche people who are the first generation in their families to attend university and how participation in Higher Education shapes their identities. It draws on a sample of 40 life stories recounted by a group of Mapuche students who live in the capital city Santiago or in the Araucanía region in southern Chile and who have gained a level of educational mobility. I argue that participants have to face several difficulties and disadvantages during their attendance at university. They have to negotiate their Mapuche identities, and face the tension of structural racism and ethnic boundaries. However, despite all these difficulties my participants managed to achieve a university education and to experience some degree of upward social mobility in their subsequent occupations. Their stories underscore their experience of agency as well as suffering.
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Sociological Research Online, 2021
The article aims to cover a gap in research, including an ethnic dimension to explore the relatio... more The article aims to cover a gap in research, including an ethnic dimension to explore the relationship between people’s trajectories and their experiences at university. Drawing on a retrospective life-story approach, the article compares how 55 respondents of different social origins recount both their routes to university and their experiences at university. By adopting an intersectional lens of analysis, we argue that differential experiences at university affect people’s trajectories of social mobility. Data from two qualitative studies are analysed in this article to explore how class and ethnic background, but also people’s location in urban or rural areas and other aspects of their family situation, affected their educational routes to earning a university place. We argue for the subjective experience of social mobility as a process of achievement, but one fraught with numerous obstacles and challenges. This article shows that respondents from working-class social backgrounds...
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Revista de Sociología, 2013
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Revista Ciencias de la Salud, 2020
Introducción: a más de dos décadas de la introducción del concepto de salud intercultural en Amér... more Introducción: a más de dos décadas de la introducción del concepto de salud intercultural en América Latina, su definición no está clara, pues ha adquirido diferentes significados dependiendo de su uso. Existen tensiones entre la tendencia a reducir la salud intercultural a la conciliación entre la biomedicinay la medicina indígena, y una perspectiva crítica que hace visible las inequidades entre ambas. Este estudio tuvo por objetivo comprender el concepto de salud intercultural, desde la visión de dos comunidades mapuche que han implementado programas de salud intercultural y que mantienen acciones de reivindicación de derechos indígenas. Desarrollo: se realizó un estudio cualitativo. Los datos se recogieron mediante entrevistas semiestructuradas a usuarios mapuche, profesionales de salud, facilitadores interculturales e informantes clave de las comunas de Cañete y Tirúa. Esta información se analizó mediante un análisis temático. Los hallazgos acerca de la visión de la salud interc...
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Anthropology Today, 2021
ne of the most important social upheavals in Chile since the end of the dictatorship started in O... more ne of the most important social upheavals in Chile since the end of the dictatorship started in October 2019, and continued until the coronavirus outbreak in March 2020. The event affected the ethnographic fieldwork that we, four anthropologists, were conducting at that time. This article draws on the recognition that, while being in different geographical locations, our respective experiences involve similar affects. Drawing on feminist epistemology, we have utilized these emotional experiences as a methodological tool to spark curiosity and open up a space for reconsidering fieldwork as ‘feel‐work’. Our respective positioning, in terms of national and emotional feelings of belonging as well as physical location, created affective dissonances that raised uneasiness while at the same time opening up a productive space to think about fieldwork as an experience of ‘out‐of‐place’ bodies and ‘out‐of‐place’ feelings.
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Sociological Research Online, 2021
The article aims to cover a gap in research, including an ethnic dimension to explore the relatio... more The article aims to cover a gap in research, including an ethnic dimension to explore the relationship between people's trajectories and their experiences at university. Drawing on a retrospective life-story approach, the article compares how 55 respondents of different social origins recount both their routes to university and their experiences at university. By adopting an intersectional lens of analysis, we argue that differential experiences at university affect people's trajectories of social mobility. Data from two qualitative studies are analysed in this article to explore how class and ethnic background, but also people's location in urban or rural areas and other aspects of their family situation, affected their educational routes to earning a university place. We argue for the subjective experience of social mobility as a process of achievement, but one fraught with numerous obstacles and challenges. This article shows that respondents from working-class social backgrounds encounter different barriers because of the lack of socioeconomic resources, previous educational disadvantages, class/ethnic discrimination, and family cultural background. Meanwhile, respondents from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds have to face different issues related to their families' expectations of maintaining their social status. Based on those findings, we suggest that research on social mobility needs to consider multiple and intersectional dimensions that frame an individual's life trajectories, instead of focusing on movements between fixed educational or occupational positions.
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In recent years, researchers have been interested in the way in which photographs can obtain info... more In recent years, researchers have been interested in the way in which photographs can obtain information, evoke thoughts and memories, or open up possibilities to explore experiences and the creation of meaning (Harper, 2002). Therefore, our interest is in calling upon researchers who would like to send photographs they have obtained for research purposes, accompanied by their narrations.
The purpose of the “Visual Narratives Project” is not only to highlight photography as an important tool in methodological terms within the social sciences, but also to promote a space for researchers who base their work on photography. For this reason, we invite you to send photographs related to research within the social sciences.
The deadlines is until 30th of November 2020
More information about the call and the project in: https://narrativasvisuales.com/
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Resumen Introducción: a más de dos décadas de la introducción del concepto de salud intercultural... more Resumen Introducción: a más de dos décadas de la introducción del concepto de salud intercultural en América Latina, su definición no está clara, pues ha adquirido diferentes significados dependiendo de su uso. Existen tensiones entre la tendencia a reducir la salud intercultural a la conciliación entre la biome-dicina y la medicina indígena, y una perspectiva crítica que hace visible las inequidades entre ambas. Este estudio tuvo por objetivo comprender el concepto de salud intercultural, desde la visión de dos comunidades mapuche que han implementado programas de salud intercultural y que mantienen acciones de reivindicación de derechos indígenas. Desarrollo: se realizó un estudio cualitativo. Los datos se recogieron mediante entrevistas semiestructuradas a usuarios mapuche, profesionales de salud, facilitadores interculturales e informantes clave de las comunas de Cañete y Tirúa. Esta información se analizó mediante un análisis temático. Los hallazgos acerca de la visión de la salud intercultural se agruparon en cuatro temas: atender las necesidades de salud más urgentes de la comunidad; respetar al usuario y su cultura; respetar el sistema de salud indígena; y respetar los derechos colectivos del pueblo mapuche. Conclusiones: la salud intercultural se considera un enfoque que debe asegurar la atención de calidad, la participación de la comunidad y el respeto a la salud tradicional. En esta, los derechos de los pueblos indígenas son la piedra angular. En un contexto marcado por la inequidad y la discriminación hacia los pueblos indígenas, la complementariedad entre sistemas médicos no es un tema prioritario. Palabras clave: asistencia sanitaria culturalmente competente; población indígena; derechos de los pue-blos indígenas; política de salud.
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This article draws on life history interviews with Indigenous university students in Chile to dem... more This article draws on life history interviews with Indigenous university students in Chile to demonstrate the ways these young people re-signify and negotiate their participation in higher education. International scholarship has emphasized the unequal conditions for minority groups to access higher education, but attention also needs to be given to the ways students forge new identity pathways for themselves within these racialized environments. Our analysis utilizes LatCrit studies to emphasize how marginal and hybrid identities enable forms of resistance and counter-narratives to dominant (white) ideologies and assimilatory practices. We focus on the concept of community cultural wealth and the empowerment that aspirational and resistant capital can give to Indigenous youth, providing alternative motives for their studies in relation to the Indigenous communities to which they belong. The paper contributes to this scholarship by underscoring positive aspects of Indigenous student resis
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Revista de Sociología, 2013
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Papers by Denisse Sepulveda Sanchez
The purpose of the “Visual Narratives Project” is not only to highlight photography as an important tool in methodological terms within the social sciences, but also to promote a space for researchers who base their work on photography. For this reason, we invite you to send photographs related to research within the social sciences.
The deadlines is until 30th of November 2020
More information about the call and the project in: https://narrativasvisuales.com/
The purpose of the “Visual Narratives Project” is not only to highlight photography as an important tool in methodological terms within the social sciences, but also to promote a space for researchers who base their work on photography. For this reason, we invite you to send photographs related to research within the social sciences.
The deadlines is until 30th of November 2020
More information about the call and the project in: https://narrativasvisuales.com/
This thesis explores how upward social mobility impacts on the racial and class cultures of Mapuche indigenous people with higher education in Chile, and how this affects their social identities. The research focuses in particular on a sample of socially mobile Mapuche, the biggest indigenous group in Chile, who have managed to achieve a university education and experienced some degree of upward social mobility in their subsequent occupations. This experience of social mobility is often challenging and creates cultural and social tensions, which requires the complex negotiation and renegotiation of identity.
Methodologically, this research adopts a qualitative perspective, examining the life trajectories of the respondents in order to explore the challenges that social mobility creates for groups who are disadvantaged in terms of both their class and ethnic position, and examines how my Mapuche sample negotiated their mobility transitions using a variety of different strategies. It is built on data collected through interviews with a group of 40 educationally mobile Mapuche people who live (i) in the Metropolitan region, where the capital city Santiago is located, or (ii) in the predominantly rural Araucanía region in southern Chile, which historically was part of the Mapuche ‘homeland’. The interviews were focused on highlighting their most significant educational and work experiences in their life trajectories.
The argument of this thesis contributes to the understanding of social mobility of indigenous groups from a multi-dimensional perspective, examining how mobility affects both class and ethnic social positioning. In order to understand this, I use a Bourdieusian framework to analyse the process of social mobility transition. The Bourdieusian approach is particularly useful for understanding a key empirical theme that emerges in the sample’s mobility experiences, in which they narrate the difficulties of transition as leading to feeling like a ‘fish out of water’ in their new social locations. However, a cultural class approach does not sufficiently address the intersectional influence of ethnicity on mobility processes, so I also use a more intersectional analysis to explore how, within my sample, people deployed several strategies in order to negotiate mobility transitions and to ‘fit in’ to their new social location.
You are free to: Share-copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms: • Attribution-You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. • NonCommercial-You may not use the material for commercial purposes. • NoDerivatives-If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
How to cite this book? Sepúlveda, D. & Ortiz, F. (2022). Visual Narratives: Photography as a methodology in social sciences. Chile: Visual Narratives.
You are free to: Share-copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms: • Attribution-You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. • NonCommercial-You may not use the material for commercial purposes. • NoDerivatives-If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
¿Como citar este libro? Sepúlveda, D. & Ortiz, F. (2022). Narrativas Visuales: La fotografía como metodología en las ciencias sociales. Chile: Narrativas Visuales.
la región de La Araucanía quienes son mapuche y desde esta
posicionalidad se presenta la iniciativa fotográfica “Percepciones
de las Identidades Indígenas Contemporáneas”, el cual tiene
como propósito visualizar las distintas apreciaciones que tienen
las personas que pertenecen y/o identifican con alguno de los
pueblos originarios de Chile acerca de sus identidades a través de
autorretratos.
Es así, que para responder la pregunta ¿qué significa pertenecer
algún pueblo originario en la actualidad? Las personas indígenas
debieron contestar, con el objetivo de construir un relato colectivo
de las identidades indígenas contemporáneas, desde los y las
propios/as protagonistas, como un intento de derribar las jerarquías
de conocimiento y dando lugar a nuevas formas de conocernos.
Junto con saludar, nos complace informar que hemos abierto una nueva convocatoria para la revista Punto Género .
En esta ocasión será un número temático que abordará la temática de la interseccionalidad y la fecha límite para la recepción de artículos es el 31 de marzo.
Agradecemos mucho su difusión.
More info: https://revistapuntogenero.uchile.cl/
RC28 Social Stratification
Language: Spanish and English
This session invites papers that explore narratives of educational social mobility of indigenous people focusing on different obstacles, challenges and as well advantages and resistance they have to face before, during and after university. Possible topics include but not limited to choice of higher education institution and field of study; strategies to negotiate class and ethnic identities; strategies to negotiate gender relations. We welcome submissions that employ subjective perspective of social mobility as well intersectionality and postcoloniality approach. Both empirical and theoretical explorations are of interest.
Session Organizer:
Denisse SEPULVEDA, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland Haute école de travail social ▪ HES-SO Genève, denissesep@u.uchile.cl
More information: https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2020/webprogrampreliminary/Session14159.html
The opening talk was delivered by Professor Anne Lavanchy, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland. Professor Lavanchy specialises in political and legal anthropology, anthropology of institutions and kinship, and has published several articles on research methods and ethics. Her talk, titled Being Indigenous, or the Obligation to ‘stay put’. Indigeneity, Belongings, and Othering Processes in Southern Chile, explored the ways in which the Chilean Indigenous Law frames the Mapuche relationship to the land. Her analysis draws on fieldwork conducted since the early 2000 with Mapuche communities in Southern Chile, specifically in the Elicura valley, Province of Arauco.
The keynote was delivered by Professor Maxine Molyneux, Professor of Sociology at University College of London. Professor Molyneux has written extensively in the fields of political sociology, gender and development, human rights and social policy; she has acted as a senior adviser, consultant and researcher to UNRISD, UNIFEM and UN Women on a variety of research projects, as well as to IDRC (Canada), and Oxfam; among others. Her talk offered analytic reflections on feminism as a political movement, describing the evolution of feminisms in Argentina Chile and Uruguay, and then moving on to focus on contemporary history considering the differences between the feminism of the early 2nd wave and the new wave that we see breaking across the world today.
The seminar also included a talk on the role of statistics in Social Sciences and Social Change by Dr Patricio Troncoso, from The University of Manchester.
The organisers would like to warmly thanks Chile Global Seminars UK, artsmethods@manchester, Marca Chile, the SALC Graduate School staff, Professor Armando Barrientos, Doctor Gillian Evans, and our great photographer Daniel Díaz. We would also like to thank our special guests Professor Maxine Molyneux and Professor Anne Lavanchy, as well as all our presenters and attendees.
Denisse Sepúlveda, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland.
Francisca Ortiz, University of Manchester.
Francisca Ortiz, University of Manchester.
Denisse Sepúlveda, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland.